The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck eBook

Nor was there any need for him, he was assured, to
mention the imperishable names of their dear homeland’s
poets and statesmen of to-day, the orators and philanthropists
and prominent business-men who jostled one another
in her splendid, new asphalted streets, since all
were quite familiar to his audience,—­as
familiar, he would venture to predict, as they would
eventually be to the most cherished recollections
of Macaulay’s prophesied New Zealander, when
this notorious antipodean should pay his long expected
visit to the ruins of St. Paul’s.

In fine, by a natural series of transitions, Colonel
Musgrave thus worked around to “the very pleasing
duty with which our host, in view of the long and
intimate connection between our families, has seen
fit to honor me”—­which was, it developed,
to announce the imminent marriage of Miss Patricia
Stapylton and Mr. Joseph Parkinson.

It may conservatively be stated that everyone was
surprised.

Old Stapylton had half risen, with a purple face.

The colonel viewed him with a look of bland interrogation.

There was silence for a heart-beat.

Then Stapylton lowered his eyes, if just because the
laws of caste had triumphed, and in consequence his
glance crossed that of his daughter, who sat motionless
regarding him. She was an unusually pretty girl,
he thought, and he had always been inordinately proud
of her. It was not pride she seemed to beg him
muster now. Patricia through that moment was
not the fine daughter the old man was sometimes half
afraid of. She was, too, like a certain defiant
person—­oh, of an incredible beauty, such
as women had not any longer!—­who had hastily
put aside her bonnet and had looked at a young Roger
Stapylton in much this fashion very long ago, because
the minister was coming downstairs, and they would
presently be man and wife,—­provided always
her pursuing brothers did not arrive in time....

Old Roger Stapylton cleared his throat.

Old Roger Stapylton said, half sheepishly: “My
foot’s asleep, that’s all. I beg
everybody’s pardon, I’m sure. Please
go on”—­he had come within an ace
of saying “Mr. Rudolph,” and only in the
nick of time did he continue, “Colonel Musgrave.”

So the colonel continued in time-hallowed form, with
happy allusions to Mr. Parkinson’s anterior
success as an engineer before he came “like a
young Lochinvar to wrest away his beautiful and popular
fiancee from us fainthearted fellows of Lichfield”;
touched of course upon the colonel’s personal
comminglement of envy and rage, and so on, as an old
bachelor who saw too late what he had missed in life;
and concluded by proposing the health of the young
couple.

This was drunk with all the honors.

VI

Upon what Patricia said to the colonel in the drawing-room,
what Joe Parkinson blurted out in the hall, and chief
of all, what Roger Stapylton asseverated to Rudolph
Musgrave in the library, after the other guests had
gone, it is unnecessary to dwell in this place.
To each of these in various fashions did Colonel Musgrave
explain such reasons as, he variously explained, must
seem to any gentleman sufficient cause for acting
as he had done; but most candidly, and even with a
touch of eloquence, to Roger Stapylton.